Direction-dependent turning leads to anisotropic diffusion and persistence
By Nadia Loy
Appears in collection : 2022 - T1 - WS1 - Tissue growth and movement
Cells and organisms follow aligned structures in their environment, a process that can generate persistent migration paths. Kinetic transport equations are a popular modelling tool for de- scribing biological movements at the mesoscopic level, yet their formulations usually assume a constant turning rate. Here we relax this simplification, extending to include a turning rate that varies according to the anisotropy of a heterogeneous environment. We extend known methods of parabolic and hyperbolic scaling and apply the results to cell movement on micro-patterned domains also through numerical simulation of the transport model. We show that inclusion of orientation dependence in the turning rate can lead to persistence of motion in an otherwise fully symmetric environment, and generate enhanced diffusion in structured domains. (With Hillen, T. and Painter, K.).
